Free Glass Heart by Amy Garvey Page B

and not even Trevor is going to ruin my mood. The poster of Adam is sad, though.
    He shrugs, and gives the others a tight smile before he turns back to the screen of his laptop.
    “Was he born in a bad mood?” Jess says under her breath as she pulls out a chair.
    “Yup. Get coffees and I’ll go see what Geoff has in the oven. I want a mocha.”
    “Birdie.” Geoff smiles when I walk into the kitchen, and leans over his worktable to kiss my cheek. He smells like flour and spices and fresh sweat, and the kitchen is even warmer than the café. All three ovens shimmer with heat.
    “Anything good in there?” I crack one door to squint inside.
    “Apple fritters and molasses crisps in a few,” Geoff says, and stands back to brush his hands on his apron. The table is lined with four sheets of sugar cookies waiting to be baked, trees and stars and holly leaves smooth and perfect beneath crystallized sugar. “You here with Gabriel?”
    “And Dar and Jess. Last day of school.” I wet the tip of one finger and stick it in the colored sugar while he isn’t looking.
    He looks up and tilts his head, studying me a little too carefully. He’s more than my boss, really, but sometimes the surrogate dad business makes me squirm.
    “All set for Saturday?”
    Of course, it would help if I didn’t wind up telling him almost everything anyway.
    “I think so.” I wipe my stained fingertip on the back of my jeans. “I just hope Gabriel likes the pictures.”
    “Wren!” He rolls his eyes. “You’ve been together for months, sweetie. Anyway, any fool can see that he’d love it—”
    “If I gave him a ball of hair. I know,” I mutter.
    “I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Geoff says drily, and waves me out of the kitchen. “I’ll bring out cookies when they’re done.”
    I have a little more than just the three framed photos planned anyway. I want to do something really special, something unique.
    Something magical, in the literal sense.
    For a couple of days there, I got so freaked out about being caught, I almost forgot how good it feels to use my power. And I don’t want to stop—it’s part of me, a big part of me, and that’s not going to change.
    Gabriel, and my mom, and probably anyone I asked would tell me I’m taking risks, using it at school, and here in the café last night, when Geoff was closing up the kitchen. But I was always in reach of the rag I had wiping down the counter on its own, and I was listening for him just to be sure.
    It’s not like I was going to make it rain over the cash register or turn a chair into a dog or something. Even though I’d pay serious money to see Trevor’s face if I did.
    When I walk through the door from the kitchen, Dar and Jess are laughing at the table in the front, heads bent together over something I can’t see. Gabriel is sitting beside them, long legs stretched out in front of him, pale hair falling over his forehead, the beginning of a smile half hidden behind his raised cup of coffee.
    Then he looks up and sees me, and his smile stretches out, warm and slow, the truth of it right there in his strange gray eyes.
    Happiness is a sudden star flare, so perfect it takes my breath away. Even with Geoff banging around in the kitchen and Trevor grumbling at a customer, all I can think is, Yes, this. I want to keep this .
    I push my hair out of my eyes, and let it come. It’s nearly transparent, hovering in midair—a photograph, square and old-fashioned. The rippled edges make it look as if it’s been torn from a sheet of paper. It flutters to the floor, and Gabriel, Jess, and Dar smile out at me from its face, soft and blurred like a wet watercolor.
    It’s a picture torn right out of my head.
    I crouch to snatch it off the floor just as Geoff comes out of the kitchen behind me with a fresh tray of calories.
    “Whoa, kid. Didn’t see you down there.” He skirts around me neatly as I cram the picture into my back pocket. I half expect it to crumble into